The viewer swept on. What we now saw must be on
the other side of the ship. And if the rest of the landscape had
been free of any signs that intelligence had ever been there, that
was now changed.
An arm of the lake made a narrow inlet. Set in the middle of
that was a platform of stone blocks. It was ringed by a low
parapet, on which stood stone pillars in the form of heads. Each
differed from its fellows so much as to suggest that if they did
not resemble imagined gods, they had been fashioned to portray very
unlike species. But the oddest thing was not their general
appearance, but that from those set at the four corners there
curled trails of greenish smoke, almost the shade of the water
washing below. It would seem that those heads were hollow and
housed fires.
Yet, save for that smoke, there was no sign of any life on the
stone surface of the platform. We could see most of it, and unless
someone crawled belly-flat below that low parapet, the place was
deserted. Eet continued to hiss, his back fur rising in a ridge
from nape to root of tail.
I studied those heads, trying to discover in any one of them
some small resemblance to something I had seen before on any of the
worlds I had visited. And, in the fourth from the nearest smoking
one, I thought that I did.
“Deenal!” I must have spoken that word aloud as I
recalled the museum on Iona where Vondar had been invited to a
private showing of a treasure from remote space. There had been a
massive armlet, too large to fit any human arm, and it had borne
such a face in high relief. Old, from one of the prehuman space
civilizations, named for a legend retold by the Zacathans—that
was Deenal. And about it we knew very little indeed.
Yet that was the only one—I counted the heads—out of twelve
that I had any clue to. And each undoubtedly represented a
different race. Was this a monument to some long-vanished
confederation or empire in which many species and races had been
united?
We have nonhuman (as we reckon “human”) allies and
partners, too. There are the reptilian Zacathans, the avian-evolved
Trystians, the strange Wyverns, others—a score of them. One or
two are deadly strangers with whom our kind has only wary contact.
And among those aliens who are seemingly humanoid, there are many
divisions and mutations. A man in a lifetime of roving may not even
see or hear of them all.
But Eet’s reaction to this place was so astounding (his
hissing signs of hostility continued), that I asked:
“What is it? That smoke—is there someone
there?”
Eet voiced a last hiss. Then he shook his head, almost as if he
were coming out of a state of deep preoccupation.
“Storrff—”
It was no sound, nor any word I recognized. Then he corrected
himself hurriedly, as if afraid he might have been revealing too
much in shock.
“It does not matter. This is an old dead place, of no
value—” He could have been reassuring himself more than
us.
“The smoke.” I brought him back to the important
point.
“The sniffers—they take what they do not understand to
make of it a new god cult.” He appeared sure of that.
“They must have fled when we landed.”
“Storrff—” Hory voiced that word which Eet had
planted in our minds. “Who or what is Storrff?”
But Eet had himself under complete control. “Nothing which
has mattered for some thousands of your planet years. This is a
place long dead and forgotten.”
But not to you, I thought. Since he did not answer that, I knew
it was another of those subjects which he refused to discuss. And
the mystery of Eet deepened by a fraction more. Whether the Storrff
were represented by one of those heads, or whether this place
itself was Storrff, he was not going to explain. But I knew that he
recognized it or some part of it, and not pleasantly.
Already the screen was sliding past, returning to our first view
of the cliff wall. Eet climbed down the webbing.
“The ring—” He was making for the ladder.
“Why?”
But it seemed that was another subject on which he was not going
to be too informative. I turned back to Hory with the restorative.
I broke off its cap and held it to his mouth while he sucked deeply
at its contents. Must we keep him prisoner? Perhaps for the time
being. When he had finished I left him tied in the seat to follow
Eet.
The ring was no longer affixed to the top of the box. There was
a spot of raw metal where it had been. Eet stood at the wall on the
other side of the cabin, his forefeet braced against that surface,
staring up at a spot too far above his head for him to reach.
There clung the ring as tightly as if welded. But it was not a
cementing of the band which held it so. Instead the stone was tight
to the metal. And when I tried to loosen it, I had to exert all my
strength to pull it free of the surface. All the while it
blazed.
“That platform in the inlet—” I spoke my thought
aloud.
“Just so.” Eet climbed up me. “And let us now
see where and why.”
I stopped by the arms rack inside the hatch, the ring, in my
palm, jerking my left arm across my body at a painful angle. A
laser in my hand would give me more confidence than I had felt
earlier.
The ramp cranked out and down and we exited into bright
sunlight, my hand pulled away from me. The charred ground was hot
under my lightly-covered feet, so that I leaped across it. At the
foot of the cliff I turned toward the inlet, allowing the ring to
pull me.
“Not a cliff mine.” I still wondered about that.
“The stone is not from this world.” Eet was
positive. “But—there is that out there”—he
indicated the platform—“which has more draw than the cache
in the ruins. Look at the ring!”
Even in the sunlight its fire blazed. And the heat from it was
enough to burn my hand, growing ever more uncomfortable, though I
dared not loose my hold on it lest it indeed fly through the air,
not to be found again.
I plowed through sand which engulfed my feet above the ankles.
It was a thin, powdery stuff into which I sank in a way I did not
like. Then I came to the water’s edge. In spite of its
brilliant color, it was not transparent, but opaque, and I had no
idea of its depth. The ring actually jerked me forward and I had to
fight against wading in. Nor could I see any way of climbing up to
the platform, since it would be well above the head of one in the
water and there was no break in its wall.
Had I followed the pull instead of fighting it until I wavered
back and forth on the bank, I might have fallen straight into one
of the traps of this planet. Only the trap became impatient and
reached for me. The emerald surface broke in a great shower of
water, and a head which was three-quarters mouth gaped in a hideous
display of fangs and avid hunger.
I thumbed the laser as I stumbled back into the thick sand. The
beam shot straight into that exposed maw, and the creature turned
and twisted frenziedly though it uttered no cry. It was armored in
thick scales and, I believed, by chance alone I had struck its
most vulnerable point. Around it the water was beaten into green
froth by its struggles and it was still writhing as it sank. Then
it arose partly to the surface, drifting from between me and the
platform.
Moments later the body began to jerk from side to side and I
caught dim glimpses of things which tore at it, devouring the eater
in turn. But I was duly warned against trying to cross that strip
of inlet, narrow as it was.
“The sniffers—” I remembered Eet’s report.
“If they use this as a temple, how do they reach it?”
Of course they could be immune to the water lurkers, but that I did
not accept too readily.
“We have not seen the other side,” Eet returned.
“We might do well to explore in that direction.”
The pull of the ring was a force against which I had continually
to fight as I walked along the beach, first paralleling the
platform and then away from it. When we reached the end of the
water and I could see the other side, Eet was proven right as he
had been so many times before.
Lying on the sand was a collection of saplings and poles, tied
and woven together with twisted ropes. Properly moved into place,
it could span between beach and platform, though it would then be
at a sharp slope.
The ring pulled me on, and it seemed to me that its tug was
stronger, as if it grew impatient, redoubling its demand on me. I
found myself running, or trying to run, through the sand, though it
was hard to keep my feet, my left hand, holding the ring so tightly
my fingers cramped, straight out, across my body, pointing to the
platform.
When I reached the bridge I was caught in a dilemma. To let go
of the ring, to holster the laser, both actions might mean
disaster. Yet I was not sure I could shift the bridge without using
both hands and all my strength. The wood lengths from which it had
been made were bleached white and might be lighter than they looked—but—
Carefully, fighting until I was sweating as if I had been in
another brawl with Hory, I forced the ring back to my chest,
unsealed a slip of the coverall, and clapped the band inside.
Within my clothing it pushed out the fabric, but that was tough and
would hold.
The laser went into my belt, and I hurried to deal with the
bridge. It was unwieldy, but my hopes that it was light were
realized. I got it up and swung it around, so that the other end
dropped on the top of the wall. And I had no sooner done that than
the seal on the breast of my coverall burst open. Not the fabric,
but the fastener had yielded to the struggling of the ring.
My grab missed the band. With the stone flashing in triumph, it
flew out toward the platform. Now I must follow.
I made that trip on my hands and knees, Eet running as a dark
streak ahead. And I felt particularly vulnerable as I climbed. For
the span swung alarmingly under my weight and I thought that at any
moment it would slide from its hold on the upper wall and hurl me
into the water.
There was also the possibility that the sniffers might return.
And I had no wish to conduct a running battle up or down this very
precarious passage. But at last I was able to put out a hand and
rest it on solid and unyielding stone, pull myself to the dubious
safety of the wall, and then jump to the platform.
The smoke from the nearest head trailed about me, and I sneezed
at its odor. Then I thought, for a second or two, that there was a
fifth fire lit in the center of the platform, though this did not
smoke. Eet was warily circling that blaze—which was no fire after
all, but the stone, in such furious display of energy as I had
never seen.
“Keep off!” Eet’s warning stopped me.
“It is too hot to handle. It is trying to reach what calls it
so strongly. And it will either destroy itself now, or reach that
which it seeks. But it is beyond our control.”
I knelt to see the better. Beyond our control? It had always
been that. We had set it to our service in the ship, but how easily
it had broken free. And all other times we—or I—had obeyed it
and not it me.
Eet was right. The warmth that came from it was now a seething
furnace heat. There was a raw radiance which hurt my eyes, a thrust
of heat that drove me back and back, until I crouched against the
wall beneath one of the smoking heads.
The mutant was probably right in believing that this unendurable
burst of energy fought to destroy the stone, burn it to one of
those cinders. But if it sought death, it was going in a blaze of
glory.
I had to shield not only my eyes but my face against the fury.
Eet was not with me. I hoped he was safe on the other side of that
inferno.
“Just so,” he let me know. “It is still trying
to cut through.”
I did not try to witness the struggle. The bursting light would
have blinded me. Even though I shut my eyes, held my hands tightly
across them, and turned my face to the wall, I could feel the
effects of the holocaust. Could I bear it much longer? If the heat
increased I might be seriously burned, or forced into the lake.
Between one fate and the other there was little choice. Then—that
lashing heat was gone! The stone had died—
Pushing around, I got to my feet. I did not take my hands from
my face and open my eyes until I stood upright. Then I looked away,
dreading to face what must lie in front of me.
When I did, I fully expected to see a charred cinder. But what
was there was an opening in the platform, a perfect square, as if
some door had been burned away. And the light from below was not
exactly faded, but was pulsating in a less strident and
eye-destroying way.
Eet had already reached the hole. I saw his head shoot out and
down as he stretched his neck to its greatest extent to view what
lay there. But I went more cautiously, testing each block I stepped
upon. That hole bore a likeness to a trap door and I had no wish to
be caught in such.
The surface seemed solid enough, and with a couple of hesitant
strides I joined my companion to look into the interior. The
glowing stone lay on a coffer such as the one we had seen in the
derelict ship. But the stones in this were very much alive, more so
even than those in the cache of the ruins. And their light, coming
through a slit, gave us an excellent view of the vault.
It would seem that the platform was only the outer shell of a
room, perhaps a storeroom like that of the ruins. There were many
boxes in orderly piles along its walls, and none of them had been
affected by time. All were tightly sealed, showing not even
hair-thin marks of an opening.
Only after I had studied them for a long moment did their
general size and shape make me uneasy. There was something about
them—long, narrow, not too deep. What was it—?
“Can you not see?” asked Eet. “These did not
give their dead to the fire; they hid them away in boxes, as if
they could lock them from the earth and the changes of time!”
His contempt was cold.
“But those stones—if this is a tomb, why leave the
stones here?”
“Do not many races bury treasures with their dead, that
those no longer with them may carry into the Final Dark what they
esteemed most in the days of their strength?”
“Primitive peoples, yes,” I conceded. But that a
race which had achieved space flight would do so—no. And now I
noted something else. While many of those boxes did bear too close
a resemblence to coffins to dismiss Eet’s explanation as
fantasy, there were others of different dimensions.
Eet interrupted my thoughts. “Look about you!” His
head shot up and turned from side to side, the nose pointing at
those rows of heads. “Different species, perhaps different
shapes for bodies. This was a composite tomb, made to hold more
than one people—”
“Yet all following a single burial ceremony?” I
countered. For even among the same species there are different
modes of paying honor and bidding farewell to the dead. And to find
one vault holding so many burials, seemingly united—
“It might be so,” Eet answered. “Let us assume
that a composite garrison, even a single ship’s company, were
marooned here. That there was no chance for their eventual return
home. Yet, they would hope that in the future there might come
those to seek out their final resting place.”
My mind took an imaginative leap. “And the stones were
then left as payment for their return to their proper worlds, or
for the type of funeral they desired?”
“Just so. Those would do as burial fees.”
How long had they waited? Did the worlds which had given them
birth still exist? Or did these planets now lie barren under dying
suns half the galaxy away? Why had the builders of this place
remained here? Had their empire broken apart in some vast and
sudden war? Had the relief ships never come? Had the ship fallen at
the ruins been their last hope, destroyed before their eyes in some
mechanical or natural catastrophe? And the derelict we had found
drifting—had that been a relief ship they had awaited? When it
did not arrive had they surrendered to the fact of no escape and
built this vault to tell their story to the future?
I glanced from wall to wall of that tomb. There was no message
left there for our reading. Then I looked once more at the heads of
the parapet. These, seen close up, were eroded to some extent, but
they had not been as badly aged as the ruins by the cliff. Were
they the actual portraits of those resting below, or did they only
represent types of races?
Six were definitely nonhuman. Of those, one, I believed, was
insectile, at least two vaguely reptilian, one batrachian. The rest
were humanoid enough to pass as kin to my own species. Two were as
manlike as the space rovers of my own day. There were twelve of
them—but what had brought such a mixture to this planet?
I turned to Eet. “This must be the source of the stones—and these came to mine them.”
“Leaving the galleries picked so clean? That ring did not
lead to them. I do not believe that could be true. This may have
been a way station for such a shipment. Or it may have had a
purpose we cannot conceive of now. But—the fact remains that we
do have here a cache of live stones. Enough, as that Patrolman
would point out, probably to disrupt the economy of any government.
The man or men who take that box and are able to hold it will rule
space—for as long as they can keep the stones.”
I came back to the vault opening. “The light—it is
beginning to die. Perhaps the stones are also—” It was
decidedly less light in the crypt.
Eet crossed the platform in a couple of his bounds, leaping now
to the parapet. Only for a second did he so face the ship, his
whole stance suggesting he was alert to what I could neither see
nor hear. Then he was back at the same speed.
“Down!” He dashed against me, his impetus striking
me almost waist-high. “Down!”
I did drop, my feet going over the edge of the opening. Then I
swung by my hands and landed with a jar on the floor, scraping
against the side of the box which held the stones. Though the light
they emitted was now no more than a small and flickering fire, it
was enough to show me safe footing.
I glanced up just in time to see a spear of light flash across
the opening, hardly above the level of the parapet. Laser—but not
a hand one! That was from the barrel of a cutter, and it must have
been fired from the ship!
Eet climbed a pile of those boxes. He was crouched now well away
from the hole, yet near the wall facing the ship, his head laid to
the stone blocks as if through them he could still hear
something.
I put my hand on the ring. There was warmth in it, and a gleam
to the stone, but as far as I could see, it no longer threatened
any would-be wearer. And, to my surprise, it did not adhere to the
box, but came away easily. For safekeeping I put it into the front
of my coverall, making sure the seam was tightly sealed.
Again I looked to Eet. The glow was further reduced, but not
entirely gone. I could see him well enough.
“Hory?” I asked.
“Just so. It would seem he had resources we did not know
about. Somehow he loosed himself. He has now tried to kill us and
failed, so he will search for another and more effective form of
attack.”
“Go off-world—bring in the Patrol?”
“Not yet. We have hurt his pride sorely by what we have
done to him. There was more to his being here, I believe, than we—or I—first read in his mind. He may have had an inner shield.
Also, he believes if we are left here we shall of necessity join
forces with the Guild and perhaps be beyond reach before he can
return. No, he wants the ring—and our deaths—before he
goes.”
“Well, we may not be dead—but how will we get out of
here?” To try to climb again to the platform would expose us
to Hory’s beam. He need only wait; time was now on his
side.
“Not altogether,” Eet informed me. “If the
Guild left men here, and we can safely conclude that they did, they
will have monitored our planeting. And they will send to see who
landed. Remember, they picked up Hory the first time. Almost too
easily. Now I wonder why.”
I brushed aside Eet’s speculations about the past.
“We may be half a continent away from their camp.”
“But they must have some form of small aircraft. It would
be necessary for their explorations. Yes, they will come—and I do
not think we are as far from their base as you suggest. The ruins
were once part of a settlement of some size. This tomb would not be
located too distant from that.”
“Always supposing it is a tomb. So we have to sit here and
wait for the Guild to come after Hory. But how will we be any
better off then?”
“We shall not, if we do so wait,” Eet answered
calmly.
“Then how do we get out—just by wishing?” I asked.
“If we top that hole, he burns me—though you might be able
to make it.”
Eet still held his listening position against the wall.
“Just so. An interesting problem, is it not?”
“Interesting!” I curbed my temper. I could think of
several things to call the present situation, all of them more
forceful than “interesting.”
The viewer swept on. What we now saw must be on
the other side of the ship. And if the rest of the landscape had
been free of any signs that intelligence had ever been there, that
was now changed.
An arm of the lake made a narrow inlet. Set in the middle of
that was a platform of stone blocks. It was ringed by a low
parapet, on which stood stone pillars in the form of heads. Each
differed from its fellows so much as to suggest that if they did
not resemble imagined gods, they had been fashioned to portray very
unlike species. But the oddest thing was not their general
appearance, but that from those set at the four corners there
curled trails of greenish smoke, almost the shade of the water
washing below. It would seem that those heads were hollow and
housed fires.
Yet, save for that smoke, there was no sign of any life on the
stone surface of the platform. We could see most of it, and unless
someone crawled belly-flat below that low parapet, the place was
deserted. Eet continued to hiss, his back fur rising in a ridge
from nape to root of tail.
I studied those heads, trying to discover in any one of them
some small resemblance to something I had seen before on any of the
worlds I had visited. And, in the fourth from the nearest smoking
one, I thought that I did.
“Deenal!” I must have spoken that word aloud as I
recalled the museum on Iona where Vondar had been invited to a
private showing of a treasure from remote space. There had been a
massive armlet, too large to fit any human arm, and it had borne
such a face in high relief. Old, from one of the prehuman space
civilizations, named for a legend retold by the Zacathans—that
was Deenal. And about it we knew very little indeed.
Yet that was the only one—I counted the heads—out of twelve
that I had any clue to. And each undoubtedly represented a
different race. Was this a monument to some long-vanished
confederation or empire in which many species and races had been
united?
We have nonhuman (as we reckon “human”) allies and
partners, too. There are the reptilian Zacathans, the avian-evolved
Trystians, the strange Wyverns, others—a score of them. One or
two are deadly strangers with whom our kind has only wary contact.
And among those aliens who are seemingly humanoid, there are many
divisions and mutations. A man in a lifetime of roving may not even
see or hear of them all.
But Eet’s reaction to this place was so astounding (his
hissing signs of hostility continued), that I asked:
“What is it? That smoke—is there someone
there?”
Eet voiced a last hiss. Then he shook his head, almost as if he
were coming out of a state of deep preoccupation.
“Storrff—”
It was no sound, nor any word I recognized. Then he corrected
himself hurriedly, as if afraid he might have been revealing too
much in shock.
“It does not matter. This is an old dead place, of no
value—” He could have been reassuring himself more than
us.
“The smoke.” I brought him back to the important
point.
“The sniffers—they take what they do not understand to
make of it a new god cult.” He appeared sure of that.
“They must have fled when we landed.”
“Storrff—” Hory voiced that word which Eet had
planted in our minds. “Who or what is Storrff?”
But Eet had himself under complete control. “Nothing which
has mattered for some thousands of your planet years. This is a
place long dead and forgotten.”
But not to you, I thought. Since he did not answer that, I knew
it was another of those subjects which he refused to discuss. And
the mystery of Eet deepened by a fraction more. Whether the Storrff
were represented by one of those heads, or whether this place
itself was Storrff, he was not going to explain. But I knew that he
recognized it or some part of it, and not pleasantly.
Already the screen was sliding past, returning to our first view
of the cliff wall. Eet climbed down the webbing.
“The ring—” He was making for the ladder.
“Why?”
But it seemed that was another subject on which he was not going
to be too informative. I turned back to Hory with the restorative.
I broke off its cap and held it to his mouth while he sucked deeply
at its contents. Must we keep him prisoner? Perhaps for the time
being. When he had finished I left him tied in the seat to follow
Eet.
The ring was no longer affixed to the top of the box. There was
a spot of raw metal where it had been. Eet stood at the wall on the
other side of the cabin, his forefeet braced against that surface,
staring up at a spot too far above his head for him to reach.
There clung the ring as tightly as if welded. But it was not a
cementing of the band which held it so. Instead the stone was tight
to the metal. And when I tried to loosen it, I had to exert all my
strength to pull it free of the surface. All the while it
blazed.
“That platform in the inlet—” I spoke my thought
aloud.
“Just so.” Eet climbed up me. “And let us now
see where and why.”
I stopped by the arms rack inside the hatch, the ring, in my
palm, jerking my left arm across my body at a painful angle. A
laser in my hand would give me more confidence than I had felt
earlier.
The ramp cranked out and down and we exited into bright
sunlight, my hand pulled away from me. The charred ground was hot
under my lightly-covered feet, so that I leaped across it. At the
foot of the cliff I turned toward the inlet, allowing the ring to
pull me.
“Not a cliff mine.” I still wondered about that.
“The stone is not from this world.” Eet was
positive. “But—there is that out there”—he
indicated the platform—“which has more draw than the cache
in the ruins. Look at the ring!”
Even in the sunlight its fire blazed. And the heat from it was
enough to burn my hand, growing ever more uncomfortable, though I
dared not loose my hold on it lest it indeed fly through the air,
not to be found again.
I plowed through sand which engulfed my feet above the ankles.
It was a thin, powdery stuff into which I sank in a way I did not
like. Then I came to the water’s edge. In spite of its
brilliant color, it was not transparent, but opaque, and I had no
idea of its depth. The ring actually jerked me forward and I had to
fight against wading in. Nor could I see any way of climbing up to
the platform, since it would be well above the head of one in the
water and there was no break in its wall.
Had I followed the pull instead of fighting it until I wavered
back and forth on the bank, I might have fallen straight into one
of the traps of this planet. Only the trap became impatient and
reached for me. The emerald surface broke in a great shower of
water, and a head which was three-quarters mouth gaped in a hideous
display of fangs and avid hunger.
I thumbed the laser as I stumbled back into the thick sand. The
beam shot straight into that exposed maw, and the creature turned
and twisted frenziedly though it uttered no cry. It was armored in
thick scales and, I believed, by chance alone I had struck its
most vulnerable point. Around it the water was beaten into green
froth by its struggles and it was still writhing as it sank. Then
it arose partly to the surface, drifting from between me and the
platform.
Moments later the body began to jerk from side to side and I
caught dim glimpses of things which tore at it, devouring the eater
in turn. But I was duly warned against trying to cross that strip
of inlet, narrow as it was.
“The sniffers—” I remembered Eet’s report.
“If they use this as a temple, how do they reach it?”
Of course they could be immune to the water lurkers, but that I did
not accept too readily.
“We have not seen the other side,” Eet returned.
“We might do well to explore in that direction.”
The pull of the ring was a force against which I had continually
to fight as I walked along the beach, first paralleling the
platform and then away from it. When we reached the end of the
water and I could see the other side, Eet was proven right as he
had been so many times before.
Lying on the sand was a collection of saplings and poles, tied
and woven together with twisted ropes. Properly moved into place,
it could span between beach and platform, though it would then be
at a sharp slope.
The ring pulled me on, and it seemed to me that its tug was
stronger, as if it grew impatient, redoubling its demand on me. I
found myself running, or trying to run, through the sand, though it
was hard to keep my feet, my left hand, holding the ring so tightly
my fingers cramped, straight out, across my body, pointing to the
platform.
When I reached the bridge I was caught in a dilemma. To let go
of the ring, to holster the laser, both actions might mean
disaster. Yet I was not sure I could shift the bridge without using
both hands and all my strength. The wood lengths from which it had
been made were bleached white and might be lighter than they looked—but—
Carefully, fighting until I was sweating as if I had been in
another brawl with Hory, I forced the ring back to my chest,
unsealed a slip of the coverall, and clapped the band inside.
Within my clothing it pushed out the fabric, but that was tough and
would hold.
The laser went into my belt, and I hurried to deal with the
bridge. It was unwieldy, but my hopes that it was light were
realized. I got it up and swung it around, so that the other end
dropped on the top of the wall. And I had no sooner done that than
the seal on the breast of my coverall burst open. Not the fabric,
but the fastener had yielded to the struggling of the ring.
My grab missed the band. With the stone flashing in triumph, it
flew out toward the platform. Now I must follow.
I made that trip on my hands and knees, Eet running as a dark
streak ahead. And I felt particularly vulnerable as I climbed. For
the span swung alarmingly under my weight and I thought that at any
moment it would slide from its hold on the upper wall and hurl me
into the water.
There was also the possibility that the sniffers might return.
And I had no wish to conduct a running battle up or down this very
precarious passage. But at last I was able to put out a hand and
rest it on solid and unyielding stone, pull myself to the dubious
safety of the wall, and then jump to the platform.
The smoke from the nearest head trailed about me, and I sneezed
at its odor. Then I thought, for a second or two, that there was a
fifth fire lit in the center of the platform, though this did not
smoke. Eet was warily circling that blaze—which was no fire after
all, but the stone, in such furious display of energy as I had
never seen.
“Keep off!” Eet’s warning stopped me.
“It is too hot to handle. It is trying to reach what calls it
so strongly. And it will either destroy itself now, or reach that
which it seeks. But it is beyond our control.”
I knelt to see the better. Beyond our control? It had always
been that. We had set it to our service in the ship, but how easily
it had broken free. And all other times we—or I—had obeyed it
and not it me.
Eet was right. The warmth that came from it was now a seething
furnace heat. There was a raw radiance which hurt my eyes, a thrust
of heat that drove me back and back, until I crouched against the
wall beneath one of the smoking heads.
The mutant was probably right in believing that this unendurable
burst of energy fought to destroy the stone, burn it to one of
those cinders. But if it sought death, it was going in a blaze of
glory.
I had to shield not only my eyes but my face against the fury.
Eet was not with me. I hoped he was safe on the other side of that
inferno.
“Just so,” he let me know. “It is still trying
to cut through.”
I did not try to witness the struggle. The bursting light would
have blinded me. Even though I shut my eyes, held my hands tightly
across them, and turned my face to the wall, I could feel the
effects of the holocaust. Could I bear it much longer? If the heat
increased I might be seriously burned, or forced into the lake.
Between one fate and the other there was little choice. Then—that
lashing heat was gone! The stone had died—
Pushing around, I got to my feet. I did not take my hands from
my face and open my eyes until I stood upright. Then I looked away,
dreading to face what must lie in front of me.
When I did, I fully expected to see a charred cinder. But what
was there was an opening in the platform, a perfect square, as if
some door had been burned away. And the light from below was not
exactly faded, but was pulsating in a less strident and
eye-destroying way.
Eet had already reached the hole. I saw his head shoot out and
down as he stretched his neck to its greatest extent to view what
lay there. But I went more cautiously, testing each block I stepped
upon. That hole bore a likeness to a trap door and I had no wish to
be caught in such.
The surface seemed solid enough, and with a couple of hesitant
strides I joined my companion to look into the interior. The
glowing stone lay on a coffer such as the one we had seen in the
derelict ship. But the stones in this were very much alive, more so
even than those in the cache of the ruins. And their light, coming
through a slit, gave us an excellent view of the vault.
It would seem that the platform was only the outer shell of a
room, perhaps a storeroom like that of the ruins. There were many
boxes in orderly piles along its walls, and none of them had been
affected by time. All were tightly sealed, showing not even
hair-thin marks of an opening.
Only after I had studied them for a long moment did their
general size and shape make me uneasy. There was something about
them—long, narrow, not too deep. What was it—?
“Can you not see?” asked Eet. “These did not
give their dead to the fire; they hid them away in boxes, as if
they could lock them from the earth and the changes of time!”
His contempt was cold.
“But those stones—if this is a tomb, why leave the
stones here?”
“Do not many races bury treasures with their dead, that
those no longer with them may carry into the Final Dark what they
esteemed most in the days of their strength?”
“Primitive peoples, yes,” I conceded. But that a
race which had achieved space flight would do so—no. And now I
noted something else. While many of those boxes did bear too close
a resemblence to coffins to dismiss Eet’s explanation as
fantasy, there were others of different dimensions.
Eet interrupted my thoughts. “Look about you!” His
head shot up and turned from side to side, the nose pointing at
those rows of heads. “Different species, perhaps different
shapes for bodies. This was a composite tomb, made to hold more
than one people—”
“Yet all following a single burial ceremony?” I
countered. For even among the same species there are different
modes of paying honor and bidding farewell to the dead. And to find
one vault holding so many burials, seemingly united—
“It might be so,” Eet answered. “Let us assume
that a composite garrison, even a single ship’s company, were
marooned here. That there was no chance for their eventual return
home. Yet, they would hope that in the future there might come
those to seek out their final resting place.”
My mind took an imaginative leap. “And the stones were
then left as payment for their return to their proper worlds, or
for the type of funeral they desired?”
“Just so. Those would do as burial fees.”
How long had they waited? Did the worlds which had given them
birth still exist? Or did these planets now lie barren under dying
suns half the galaxy away? Why had the builders of this place
remained here? Had their empire broken apart in some vast and
sudden war? Had the relief ships never come? Had the ship fallen at
the ruins been their last hope, destroyed before their eyes in some
mechanical or natural catastrophe? And the derelict we had found
drifting—had that been a relief ship they had awaited? When it
did not arrive had they surrendered to the fact of no escape and
built this vault to tell their story to the future?
I glanced from wall to wall of that tomb. There was no message
left there for our reading. Then I looked once more at the heads of
the parapet. These, seen close up, were eroded to some extent, but
they had not been as badly aged as the ruins by the cliff. Were
they the actual portraits of those resting below, or did they only
represent types of races?
Six were definitely nonhuman. Of those, one, I believed, was
insectile, at least two vaguely reptilian, one batrachian. The rest
were humanoid enough to pass as kin to my own species. Two were as
manlike as the space rovers of my own day. There were twelve of
them—but what had brought such a mixture to this planet?
I turned to Eet. “This must be the source of the stones—and these came to mine them.”
“Leaving the galleries picked so clean? That ring did not
lead to them. I do not believe that could be true. This may have
been a way station for such a shipment. Or it may have had a
purpose we cannot conceive of now. But—the fact remains that we
do have here a cache of live stones. Enough, as that Patrolman
would point out, probably to disrupt the economy of any government.
The man or men who take that box and are able to hold it will rule
space—for as long as they can keep the stones.”
I came back to the vault opening. “The light—it is
beginning to die. Perhaps the stones are also—” It was
decidedly less light in the crypt.
Eet crossed the platform in a couple of his bounds, leaping now
to the parapet. Only for a second did he so face the ship, his
whole stance suggesting he was alert to what I could neither see
nor hear. Then he was back at the same speed.
“Down!” He dashed against me, his impetus striking
me almost waist-high. “Down!”
I did drop, my feet going over the edge of the opening. Then I
swung by my hands and landed with a jar on the floor, scraping
against the side of the box which held the stones. Though the light
they emitted was now no more than a small and flickering fire, it
was enough to show me safe footing.
I glanced up just in time to see a spear of light flash across
the opening, hardly above the level of the parapet. Laser—but not
a hand one! That was from the barrel of a cutter, and it must have
been fired from the ship!
Eet climbed a pile of those boxes. He was crouched now well away
from the hole, yet near the wall facing the ship, his head laid to
the stone blocks as if through them he could still hear
something.
I put my hand on the ring. There was warmth in it, and a gleam
to the stone, but as far as I could see, it no longer threatened
any would-be wearer. And, to my surprise, it did not adhere to the
box, but came away easily. For safekeeping I put it into the front
of my coverall, making sure the seam was tightly sealed.
Again I looked to Eet. The glow was further reduced, but not
entirely gone. I could see him well enough.
“Hory?” I asked.
“Just so. It would seem he had resources we did not know
about. Somehow he loosed himself. He has now tried to kill us and
failed, so he will search for another and more effective form of
attack.”
“Go off-world—bring in the Patrol?”
“Not yet. We have hurt his pride sorely by what we have
done to him. There was more to his being here, I believe, than we—or I—first read in his mind. He may have had an inner shield.
Also, he believes if we are left here we shall of necessity join
forces with the Guild and perhaps be beyond reach before he can
return. No, he wants the ring—and our deaths—before he
goes.”
“Well, we may not be dead—but how will we get out of
here?” To try to climb again to the platform would expose us
to Hory’s beam. He need only wait; time was now on his
side.
“Not altogether,” Eet informed me. “If the
Guild left men here, and we can safely conclude that they did, they
will have monitored our planeting. And they will send to see who
landed. Remember, they picked up Hory the first time. Almost too
easily. Now I wonder why.”
I brushed aside Eet’s speculations about the past.
“We may be half a continent away from their camp.”
“But they must have some form of small aircraft. It would
be necessary for their explorations. Yes, they will come—and I do
not think we are as far from their base as you suggest. The ruins
were once part of a settlement of some size. This tomb would not be
located too distant from that.”
“Always supposing it is a tomb. So we have to sit here and
wait for the Guild to come after Hory. But how will we be any
better off then?”
“We shall not, if we do so wait,” Eet answered
calmly.
“Then how do we get out—just by wishing?” I asked.
“If we top that hole, he burns me—though you might be able
to make it.”
Eet still held his listening position against the wall.
“Just so. An interesting problem, is it not?”
“Interesting!” I curbed my temper. I could think of
several things to call the present situation, all of them more
forceful than “interesting.”